R programming
This training is intended to help you gain and demonstrate fundamental skills in R programming
Background and Getting Help
To get the skills in R programming needed to complete this, check out:
The BIG workshop on R programming (link), DataCamp’s introductory R course (link), and intermediate R course (link).
You can always visit Henry’s office hours (link) and ask for help in the slack group. Don’t worry if this takes a while, it’s designed to be a challenge.
Miniproject: Tic-Tac-Toe
You and your friends love to play the classic game “Tic-Tac-Toe”, but you can’t play together anymore because of the pandemic!
Write an R script that will allow you to play a game of Tic-Tac-Toe against your computer using the command line. When you’re done, send your script to Henry to test!
Create a script that lets you play a full game of tic-tac-toe, given that: 1. The script has to be executable using Rscript <your_script.R> (e.g., Rscript tic-tac-toe.R). 2. All the rules of tic-tac-toe are included. X always goes first, then O. The first to get three-in-a-row wins. A stalemate when no moves remain is a tie. 3. The script should ask the player to choose moves using a prompt (see example). 4. There should be no errors. No matter what the user inputs, they shouldn’t see any errors.
Hint: To get user input on the command line, use the following construct:
if (interactive()) {
con <- stdin()
} else {
con <- "stdin"
}
cat("X or O? ")
symbol <- readLines(con = con, n = 1)This is necessary to ensure that the script works regardless of whether you run it in RStudio or using Rscript on the command line.
Hint 2: To avoid the user getting an error, make sure that their inputs are validated. For example, if I ask the user X or O? they shouldn’t be allowed to answer B. In my version of the game (below), if the user enters an invalid response, I send a warning message and prompt them again – but you can choose your own way of handling these issues.
Bonus: There’s no requirement to make it aesthetically nice, but you get bonus points! If you want to, you can use cat() to make formatted messages to the player. You can also use Sys.sleep() to add pauses that allow the user time to read the screen.
Here’s an example:
